3 girls charged after teen beaten to death in school bathroom

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Amy Inita Joyner-Francis died April 21 after being attacked and viciously beaten inside a Wilmington, Delaware high school bathroom, police said. (Twitter)

WILMINGTON, Del. – Three girls from a Delaware high school have been charged in a fatal bathroom beating that left one of their classmates dead in late April.

Only one of the Howard High School of Technology students, 16-year-old Trinity Carr, actually hit Amy Inita Joyner-Francis, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

Cellphone video taken by one of the other two students shows Carr repeatedly striking Amy in the head and torso area with her fist, according to the News Journal.

After the attack, Carr can be seen walking out of the restroom and leaving Amy bloodied and disoriented on the bathroom floor, according to court documents. She went into cardiac arrest shortly after. According to an autopsy, Joyner-Francis had a pre-existing heart defect that led to her death. Officials argue that, despite the heart condition, she would not have died had the attack not taken place.

Department of Justice officials said they will push to try Carr as an adult. She has been charged with criminally negligent homicide, and could face a maximum of eight years in prison.

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The two other suspects in the case, Zion Snow and Chakeira Wright, could get up to a year in prison on charges of third-degree criminal conspiracy in connection with the assault. The charges stem from what authorities are calling a planned assault. In the 20 hours before Amy died, the three allegedly talked and wrote about what they wanted to do to her. Snow and Wright, neither of whom have criminal records, will be charged in juvenile court.

The deadly beating happened around 8:15 a.m. on April 21 inside one of the Wilmington school's restrooms. Students told WPVI that the fight was over a boy. Joyner-Francis, was rushed in a state police helicopter to the A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children, where she died from her injuries.

"I am so upset that a young lady lost her life today, things like that shouldn’t happen," Mayor Dennis Williams said in the hours after the shocking death. "My heart bleeds for the family, the kids that go to this school, the administrators and this city.